


Opacity

by sequence_fairy



Series: Truth To Hide [3]
Category: Bleach
Genre: Canon Compliant, F/M, Post-TYBW
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-03-19
Updated: 2017-03-19
Packaged: 2018-10-07 20:37:51
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 720
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10368924
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sequence_fairy/pseuds/sequence_fairy
Summary: Dissembling to yourself is a skill hard-learned, and must be oft-practised.





	

**Author's Note:**

> Angst. Post-TYBW. Canon-Compliant. Same ‘verse as [ Unsubstantial](http://archiveofourown.org/works/7885462) and [ Transparent](http://archiveofourown.org/works/8561740). Ren//Ruki and implied Ichiruki.

There are several things that Renji Abarai knows to be true: the _yakisoba_ noodles from the _yatai_ near the city wall down by the Eleventh are the best in the _Seireitei_ , Ukitake- _taichou_ ’s favourite tea is the fancy one from the tea shop just over the wall in the 1st District of the _Rukongai_ , and Ichigo Kurosaki is in love with Rukia Kuchiki.

After Ukitake- _taichou_ dies, Renji amends his list of inescapable truths – it now includes the fact that Rukia will take up Ukitake’s _haori_ and she will do it well, and he wonders, as he watches her move through the horde of Hollows they came across while on joint patrol, what Ichigo Kurosaki is doing now. He puts the thought out of his mind and steps up to guard Rukia’s weaker side. She looks up at him, that old fierce grin on her face and eyes alight with the heat of the fight, before leaping back into the fray with a yell.

Three years pass, much the same, Rukia steadily clawing her way into the _taichou_ ’s role through grit and determination and nerve, and Renji thinks she’ll make it this year, and then there’s a hell butterfly, from the _gensei_ – and there’s a very short list of who can send one of those there. Renji never asks what was in the message, but Rukia _shrinks_ afterwards.

She collapses in on herself, and Renji adds another thing to his list of truths: If he sees Ichigo Kurosaki again, he will tear that son of a bitch’s head clean off his shoulders. With his bare hands.

Renji picks the pieces of Rukia up, and puts them back together as best as he can. He’s not stupid, he knows the reason she falls into bed with him isn’t because she actually _wants_ to be there, with him, it’s just because the person she’d rather fall into bed with - the person she _used_ to fall into bed with if the rumours are to be believed - is no longer available and well, she’s only mostly human.

Renji will not begrudge her the comfort she takes in his arms, and he only lies to himself a little about how it makes him feel.

(It doesn’t feel like someone is driving a knife between his ribs when she closes her eyes at the peak of her pleasure, when she bites her bottom lip until it goes white and bloodless, in an effort to keep the words he can hear in the back of her throat from spilling out - she forgets herself in the heat of their joining, forgets that his hands aren’t young and barely battle-scared, that his hair is red, that her fingers tangle in it so much more than they used to in someone else’s - and Renji thinks he’s pretty good at this whole lying to himself thing.)

When Rukia gets pregnant, they marry quickly and quietly (with her brother’s blessing) and she gives birth to their daughter - rough and tumble and red-headed and violet-eyed - and Renji falls (madly, deeply, irrevocably) in love with this tiny girl that wraps her whole hand around one of his fingers.

Ichika (and Renji bites back so much when they choose the name that he fears he might actually break a tooth from the pressure on his jaw) is his baby girl, she is his tiny shadow, traipsing around after him everywhere.

Things settle comfortably between him and Rukia - they have their daughter and their jobs and that leaves neither of them with much time to wallow in ‘what if’ or ‘maybe’. Renji stops adding things to his list of truths, because the only truth that matters now is that Ichika is his, and there is no truer thing.

—

They don’t go down to the _gensei_ again until Rukia finally gets the promotion to _taichou_ , and as soon as Renji watches Rukia make eye contact with Ichigo, the last ten years falls away in the sweep of soot-black eyelashes against porcelain skin and the clench of a broad hand around a door frame.

“Yo,” says Ichigo and Renji finds himself forcibly reminded of that previous singular and most important truth - Ichigo Kurosaki loves Rukia Kuchiki, and now, watching the slow smile that curves across Rukia’s lips, Renji wonders how he could ever have thought otherwise.


End file.
